Immersive storytelling

Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business commercialisation project
Story Juice
Dr Hannah Wood is the Founder and Creative Director of Story Juice, an award-winning immersive storytelling studio creating playful experiences that put audiences at the heart. Recent projects have focused on health and wellbeing, including a partnership with Cineon on iSAVE , an adaptive VR therapy to reduce patient stress during MRI scans, and another with Hatsumi and Monobanda on Soul Paint, an arts health experience that explores emotional realities.
 
Hannah founded Story Juice to create playful experiences that connect audiences to themselves and others and inspire change and understanding. The writer and narrative experience designer's rich and varied work includes large-scale and intimate interactive theatre, video games, physical–digital immersive experiences, audio journeys, film, extended reality, poetry, prose and installations.
Hannah's ongoing research and creative practice investigates how to create emotionally engaging, multisensory immersive and interactive stories; how to adapt more traditional storytelling methods and invent new ones; and what the different affordances of physical, digital and hybrid experiences enable artists to create to connect people to themselves and others through story.
 
Through Story Juice, Hannah recently teamed up with Cineon on iSAVE , an adaptive narrative VR simulation of an MRI appointment designed to reduce patient stress and the cost of NHS appointment cancellations.
Hannah, who is also an Artist Researcher at the University, collaborated with the team to develop the narrative experience design, including environment design and characterisation of an AI-driven companion to guide patients through the experience. Hannah wrote adaptive dialogue and interactions that respond to patient anxiety measured through eye tracking and help prepare patients for their real appointment.
The project was funded by Innovate UK's Mindset extended reality for digital mental health strand, and other partners include the University of Exeter, University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust, Pico and Tobii.
iSAVE patient lying on a bed with VR headset while a health carer runs MRI scanner simulation software
 
Hannah has also worked with Sarah Ticho of Hatsumi and Niki Smit of Monobanda, Co-Directors of multi-award winning Soul Paint, which operates at the intersection of health, wellbeing, and immersive storytelling. Hannah was Script and Experience Design Consultant for the VR experience, initiated by Ticho and inspired by her health and science research.
Soul Paint uses body mapping and interactive storytelling to explore new ways to express emotions – including users 'painting' on avatars of themselves using a virtual paintbrush, different colours and textures, enabling them to visualise and then interact with their own emotional experiences.
Narrated by actor and activist Rosario Dawson, Soul Paint has garnered international accolades, including winning the SXSW 2024 XR Experience Special Jury Prize and Best in Health and Wellness at the Games for Change Festival 2024.
In Forbes, Director Sarah Ticho shared her vision and the therapeutic value of the experience: "Often we don't have words to describe how we feel […]. Body mapping can show the connections between emotions and sensations, serve as interactive storytelling and be a fascinating way of starting conversations."
 
Story Juice creates its own IP and partners with organisations and clients to deliver imaginative experiences with emotional impact.
One of its own experiences is Glass Ceiling Games , a feminist punk augmented reality game that won a Global Women in Games Award and has been featured on BBC Woman's Hour.
Using game mechanics and storytelling, it explores the perspectives of women and diverse genders and challenges everyday sexism and misogyny.
Glass Ceiling
 

Meet the researcher

Hannah Wood
Hannah's projects have tackled themes including untold stories, intimacy, desire, feminism, fertility, climate change and future technology across a range of genres, exploring how these topics translate into poetic mechanics, environmental storytelling, non-linear narrative structures and integrate physical and digital story worlds. Her work is collaborative and carefully considers intersectional representation and its role in challenging and deconstructing dominant ideologies, particularly around gender.
Hannah currently has an Arts Council England Developing Your Creative Practice grant and is researching and developing a new immersive experience called Shimmer that is set underwater and explores individual and collective voice, fear and desire.
She's collaborating with various artists and organisations and the University's Immersive Media Lab.
 
Commercialisation abstract illustration

Commercialisation in SHAPE disciplines

The Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Business is at the forefront of pioneering the commercialisation approaches within SHAPE (Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy) research.
This initiative showcases the innovative ways our academics transform research into sustainable impact, collaborating with partners to address modern world challenges through creative commercial models.
 

SHAPE disciplines address global challenges associated with marine, health and sustainability through the lens of place

Through five place-based research themes, we investigate the intricate relationships between communities, the natural world, and technology.
Locally, we co-create sustainable solutions to complex problems in order to build resilient and thriving neighbourhoods, cities, and regions. This work transcends geographical, social and political boundaries to become applicable on a global level.
place-based research
SHAPE – Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy